John Fonte is a notable American scholar and commentator specializing in issues related to American politics, nationalism, sovereignty and multiculturalism. He is also a senior fellow and director of the Center for American Common Culture at the Hudson Institute. He received his B.A. and M.A. in history from the University of Arizona, his Ph.D. in world history from the University of Chicago.
Fonte is perhaps best known for his 2011 book, “Sovereignty or Submission: Will Americans Rule Themselves or Be Ruled by Others?” He has been a vocal critic of multiculturalism and transnational progressivism, arguing that these ideologies weaken traditional national identities and nation-states’ coherence. He claims such views are antithetical to the values underpinning Western democracies.
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He gave his speech, “National Conservatism, Freedom Conservatism and Americanism,” at Hillsdale’s College National Leadership Seminar in Bellevue, Washington.
He said modern American conservatism can be divided into three waves: The first wave, embodied by William F. Buckley Jr. and Ronald Reagan, lasted from the mid-1950s to the conclusion of the Cold War; the second wave, exemplified by Paul Ryan and the two Bush presidencies, ran from the 1990s to roughly the second decade of this century; and the third wave, played out through Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump, is ongoing.
Ronald Reagan represented the first wave; his three-legged stool metaphor described the president’s coalition of conservatives as economic and social conservatives and defense hawks. Reagan became convinced that the only way to defeat Soviet communism’s anti-god ideology was found in Scripture, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Prov. 9:10a, NIV).
Solomon’s Proverbs 17:24 —[Spiritual] wisdom is before the face of the perceptive man—is illuminated by Jewish Hebrew scholar Michael V. Fox:
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